Monthly Archive for June, 2018

Annika Derksen

De Rijs

[ FUJILFILM / YOUNG TALENT 2017 – SHORT LIST ]

I have worked on a project named ‘De Rijs’ revolving around the book The Voyage of Saint Brendan. The novel revolves around Saint Brendan an Irish Monk from Galway. According to legend he read a book on the miracles of creation and decided it was untrue. He therefore chose to burn the book; as a result an angel came to punish him. Saint Brendan was sent on a voyage in search for the truth. Amongst the company of various pilgrims, he set of to navigate around the world for the next nine years. He recorded his travel by writing down all that he encountered, which were in fact a lot of the matters he had first read about in the book he burned. Nowadays the story of Saint Brendan is also considered as a metaphor. In short the mentally arduous journey one has to go through in order to arrive safe and sound in paradise.

In the light of the project I have worked on, I felt a deep connection with the metaphorical meaning of Saint Brendan’s story. In order to convey both my own interpretation and feelings I decided to unify both text and photo to get my version of Saint Brendan’s story across, since photography and text both play an important role in my life. I delved into Saint Brendan’s story and visited the places he once visited as well. Gradually his quest to paradise became mine.

Short Bio

Annika Derksen is a photographer currently based in London. She has a bachelor in photography from Luca School of Arts, campus Narafi and is now enrolled in the MA documentary photography and photojournalism at the Westminster University. From a young age on she has been intrigued by everything surrounding her. This developed into a passion to captivate that what catches her eye. As she explored the bond between her and her camera and all she could accomplish, she started to develop an interest in visualising her own thoughts and ideas into photographs.

Annalisa Natali Murri

The Black Line

[ EPF 2017 – SHORT LIST ]

Haiti and Dominican Republic are divided by 360 km of borders, 55 of which are made up of the River Massacre, in the northern region of the island.

In October 1937, its waters turned red as blood, when Rafael L. Trujillo- dictator of the DR- led one of the most infamous events in the story of the island, known as the “Parsley massacre.” In a few days, up to 30,000 Haitians were massacred along the river by Dominican military forces and conscripted civilians with the alleged excuse that a supposed Haitian “invasion” could have posed a serious threat to Dominican society and its racial integrity.

The slaughter, which owes its name to the Spanish word “perejil” (a word that Creole speaking Haitians fail to pronounce and that was used by Dominican soldiers to recognize their victims by asking them to identify a spring of parsley), has irrevocably widened the rift between the two countries and, as a long-term effect, has radicalized a deep anti-Haitian sentiment in the whole DR, which in turn resulted in episodes of violence against Haitians.

Immigrants from Haiti have been crossing the border for more than 100 years in search of a life opportunity as sugarcane or farm laborers, while the Dominican government never stopped to pursue actions of forced repatriations and a permanent policy of stigmatization against their darker-skinned neighbors.

In 2013, a court ruled that people born in the DR of undocumented migrants, from 1929 onwards, had never been entitled to Dominican citizenship and should be deprived of it, giving way to countless cases of abuses against Haitians, as illegal expulsions, denial of identity documents and arbitrary deprivation of nationality.

Even though a regularization act was subsequently issued to mitigate the discriminatory effects of that sentence, this recent kind of violence towards Haiti and its blackness represented a sort of legal ethnic cleansing, replicating by judicial instruments what in the past has been done with machetes.

Short Bio

Annalisa Natali Murri, freelance photographer, approached for the first time to photography at age 27, while attending Architectural and Urban Photography School in Valencia, Spain.

After completing her studies in engineering, she began to alternate her work to photography, focusing on personal research work and documentary projects, mainly inspired by social issues and their psychological consequences. In 2014, she was selected as an attendee for LOOKbetween mentorship program, and in 2015, she was named one of the 30 emerging photographers to watch at PDN’s 30.

Her works have been awarded and highlighted in several international contests and awards, including 70th and 71st POYi, Sony World Photography Award and Catchlight’s Activist Awards.

Lionel Jusseret

Kinderszenen

[ EPF 2017 – SHORT LIST ]

Inspired by Fernand Deligny anti-psychiatric research, the French association J’interviendrais offers kids with deep autism to live collectively in different country houses. Out of the walls, we walk off the path, cross wild torrents or look for abandoned houses to make drawings with color chalks. For them, a break. For us, a journey.

Autistan, a land of great unattainable desert. Among that tribe, communication is always a magical story. It is unique for every child, there is no manual to enter their own world. Immersion is powerful, the work is exhausting. In absence of all morality, life is unforgivable. This particular childhood is true, brute, savage. They swing between presence and absence, pure sweetness and ultra violence. The idea is to find a gateway with every kid, they only open the door if they want to. No one ever forces them to.

This photographic work began strongly with David, “nomadic” child returning from mental institutions. “Incurable, unbearable, unlivable,” experts said about him. He reached eighteen years but always seemed to have only four. A year
later, no more news from David. One of the private Belgian mental hospitals, where hundred of children are exported every year and kind of disappear between their walls, remained quiet. David was gone. He left behind traces of violence
and memories of laughter and tears. And a picture also.

Short Bio

Lionel Jusseret was born in Belgium in 1989. While finishing his documentary studies in INSAS in 2012, a Belgian cinema school, he began to photograph autistic children after two years among them as an educator at the association J’interviendrais. This work has received the Vocatio grant 2017 and the first jury prize at Les Nuits Photographiques de Pierrevert 2017.

Related Links

(This is Brandise Danesewich @antimodel for Burn Diary this week traveling to Oaxaca, Mexico. Day 11/711:11 CST 11/5Coyoacán. Just out wandering aimlessly in the streets. My inner city intuition compass is pretty in tune now despite having not really slept much in the past week. But the lack of sleep and addition of techno cafe coffee might make for the perfect recipe. Gorgeous face of a young man in the streets here. I told him I’d send it to him but he doesn’t have a phone).

Haris Kakarouhas

Natural Presence

Human beings without a particular external identity, but with an esoteric one. All are present in their own truth, expressed in a directly intimate way. I call this kind of image prosopo-graphy. It is coming from the ancient Greek word prosopo which means the essence or natural reality of a person. The photographic process is a spontaneous choreography based on empathy and dominated by rhythm, transcending space and time. In this new vertical time, according to Plotinus, beauty identifies with spirit. The same applies for the images of nature. And the photographs reflect those common qualities of the Being in humans and nature.

This series was created in spiritual communities and national parks around the globe the last fifteen years. The work raises questions on Human Ecology and in this particular time of crisis it is a proposal -as well as a possible antidote- to focus on reestablishing the connection with the Real beginning, with Mother Earth, and ourselves.2003-2018

Bio

Haris Kakarouhas was born in Athens, Greece. Studied Colour Theory & visual perception (M.Sc) and photography (Ph.D) (title of thesis: ‘Prosopography’ – Mapping the Self) in U.K. He also studied several different forms of Art Therapy.

His photographic work has been published and exhibited extensively in Greece & abroad. His books are ‘On the timelines’ and ‘Suspended Time : A Cuban portrait’ This book is published in six European countries. Now is publishing his new book ‘Natural Presence’. He won the European Publishers Award and the Schweppes Photographic Portrait prize (as runner up) Also the Milos prize for the Art book of the year in Greece. He served as the artistic director of the Eco-Art Festival in Athens, Greece, organised by the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change and theNational Museum of Contemporary Art. Part of his work belongs to museums and private collections. He currently teaches photographic workshops under the thematic title “Insightphoto” Photography as affective experience.